Ultimate Spider-Man , written by Brian Michael Bendis, drawn for 110 issues by Mark Bagley, then later Stuart Immonen, David LaFeunte, Sara Pichelli, probably some other folks, was the longest-running title in the Ultimate Universe by a fair bit. Probably the most successful, depending on how you want to grade versus Millar and Hitch's The Ultimates, which I imagine had higher sales, but also didn't have to sustain them long.
I started buying Ultimate Spider-Man when I got back into comics, shortly after I started college. I don't think I necessarily understood what the point was when I bought this, but it wasn't too hard to figure out. Taking Spider-Man to the beginning, revising and in surface ways updating Ditko and Lee's story. The spider is genetically modified rather than radioactive. Both the company that modified it (Oscorp) and the questionably legal governmental agency (SHIELD) are aware Peter got bit. Peter can't keep his mask on for anything.
I don't know if Bendis dislikes the idea of secret identities, or simply figured there was no way a 15-year-old could keep his shit together enough to maintain one in a world with as much surveillance as ours. When Nick Fury finally pops up, about 24 issues in, he rattles off a laundry list of different ways he knows Peter is Spider-Man. As someone who enjoys the secret identity aspect of superheroes, that trend was more than a little frustrating.
Bendis had I think made his name on street-level crime books, even if they included superpowers, such he and Michael Avon Oeming's creatively titled Powers. So a lot of the stories revolve around mob level crime, sometimes industrial espionage. Doc Ock worked for Osborn, but was actually a mole for Justin Hammer, who has his own program creating superhumans. His first confrontation with Spider-Man is Peter trying to stop him from tearing up Hammer Industries in revenge. Someone targets Roxxon for destruction a couple of times, and because Spidey stops them (just wanting to help people) he ends up targeted for that.
Daredevil never got above a supporting character in the Ultimate Universe, so Kingpin maintains a large (no pun intended) presence among Spider-Man's rogues' gallery whether Hornhead is around or not. Which does give Bendis the chance to show Peter struggling with how powerful people can escape justice, as even after he gets a recording of Fisk killing a man to the media, Fisk manages to beat the rap.
Granted that street-level is Spider-Man's bread and butter, it feels like it lost something that everybody was the product of what seemed to be a few concentrated experimentation programs, rather than people getting powers through weird accidents happening all over the place. Made the universe seem smaller. Even the symbiotes, rather than aliens, were something Peter and Eddie Brock's parents created as step 1 in a cure for cancer (which Curt Conners later got a hold of and was messing with before Peter found it). So you're back to the tight circle of genetic researchers being responsible for everything.
It wasn't always street-level stuff. Bendis had Spidey get tangled up in Dr. Strange stuff once, confront vampires a couple of times, probably a couple of other things I'm forgetting. There was a mini-series where I think Norman Osborn wanted to take over the country or something like that, but on the whole, not many stories about someone holding the city for ransom, or threatening to use an orbital satellite to wipe out half the country.
(There was also the jokey Freaky Friday 2-parter when Spidey and Wolverine wake up in each other's bodies thanks to Jean Grey being an asshole. Which does at least lead to Spider-Man cussing out the entire team of X-Men as a bunch of various expletives.)
Like I said, Bagley drew the book for 110 issues straight. With Bendis' writing style, that's maybe 37 issues worth of actual plot. Outside of the Green Goblin, who fans dubbed "Goblin Hulk" (and later the Hobgoblin, who stayed in the same vein), he didn't really change the look of the major villains. I guess Electro got turned into a very simplified hairless guy in a black leather suit/pants combo. Or maybe it was a tracksuit? I'm not sure. Doc Ock still looked basically like Doc Ock. Ditto for Kraven, the Vulture, etc. Probably just as well. I don't think people loved Goblin Hulk.
Much the same would be true for the supporting cast. Aunt May looked younger, as Bendis based her personality more on his own mother, moving away from the frail old woman always two seconds away from another heart attack. This May had a job, she eventually started dating again, she chewed out Jonah on the phone after he fired Peter. Mary Jane looked about the same, but was Peter lifelong friend who was more of a quiet bookish sort. Gwen Stacy came in as the wild child, with the piercings and carrying knives around.
As far as civilian life, Bendis kept things focused more at home and school. Peter worked at the Bugle, but as an IT guy, and as a high schooler among adults, he doesn't seem to interact with them much. No pep talks from Robbie Robertson or Ben Urich, no dating Betty Brant (none of whom every get much focus.)
But lots of dating melodrama at school. Peter tells MJ his secret early on, which was sort of a sweet issue about two dorky teens misreading each other. Bagley can handle facial expressions and body language. Peter and MJ date. Bad things happen, or nearly happen, Peter breaks up with her. They start to get together, he has another bad experience, they break up again. Kitty Pryde and Peter start dating. They break up, but she moves to the neighborhood anyway. Then she starts dating Kong (or Kenny) a new character Bendis created for the series who looks a bit like Bendis (at least the way Bagley draws both of them.) Liz Allen turns out to first hate mutants, then actually be a mutant (basically Firestar, seemingly so there could be a comic with Spidey and his Amazing Friends on the cover.)
I think sometimes the tipping point for the book was when Bendis tried to introduce Geldoff, the foreign exchange student who had the power to blow stuff up somehow, and used it to destroy the principal's car after he suspended some of the football team. Geldoff was new, was apparently not a mutant because he was experimented on in the womb (he was from Latveria), and apparently the fans hated him.
Bendis pretty much stuck to remixing the hits after that. More Kingpin! Carnage! Gwen Stacy dying! Black Cat and Elektra! A Clone Saga (ye gods he did a Clone Saga)! Aunt May having a heart attack! Harry Osborn being self-destructive! I mean, I guess it worked for a long time. Helps when you do a 9-issue Gang War story that has maybe 3 issues' worth of plot.
To be fair, Bendis does have Peter grow over the series. The progress is erratic and hard to trace, but especially by "Ultimate Knights" the last full arc Bendis and Bagley do together, Spidey is refusing to be pushed around by Daredevil, making a stand to keep Daredevil from killing an innocent woman to hurt Fisk, and finally using the fact that Nick Fury seems to like him as leverage to make Fisk back off. He seemed to have a better sense of himself, what he wanted, what he could do.
I gave up on the book at issue 122, for a host of reasons. Bendis' last couple of multi-issue stories hadn't done it for me, and the next was going to a) involve the symbiotes, b) draw elements from the Ultimate Spider-Man video game, and most damningly c) tie-in to Jeph Loeb's Ultimatum. After I left, Peter almost died in Ultimatum, then did die (I think keeping Punisher from killing Captain America). Then maybe didn't die, but Miles Morales was Spider-Man by then? Then the universe got wiped out in the run up to Secret Wars.
2 comments:
I think I gave up around #50. I stayed with it to see how Ultimate Black Cat turned out, as I've always been a fan of BC, and then stopped following straight after.
I mostly enjoyed it up until Ultimate Carnage got introduced and killed Gwen Stacy. Around #65, then. There were a couple of stories after that I like OK ("Ultimate Knights" mostly), but I hung on way too long. The Gang War story, the Hobgoblin story, Ultimate Clone Saga, yeesh.
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